This is the heart of the Bible Belt. I can't count the number of doctors and nurses who have said to me over the last few days I was with Linda that "Jesus doesn't want her to die" or that terminating care when she has a good chance of recovery is "assisted suicide." Never mind that Linda has never shared those beliefs, as the three of you well know. She has been an atheist all her life. Regardless, the "ethics" doctor assigned to evaluate her competence to decide for herself to terminate treatment is a Roman Catholic who believes suicide is a mortal sin. He told me so himself. How these people who are strangers to Linda can presume to substitute their judgment for mine regarding her wishes is more than audacious and presumptive. The Hospital just wants to keep her alive because of the malpractice lawsuit that is coming and because they will get another million from Blue Cross Blue Shield before this ends. That fact alone should disqualify them entirely from decision making in place of Linda.
I am not at war with Debbie, yet. I have phoned her, e-mailed her and sent her a message on her Facebook page which I know she is accessing because she sent me a fortune cookie last night in the middle of the night. I guess she has her laptop in Linda's secret room now. The hospital would not even let my brother in to see her just to tell her that I was getting out of jail and I was alright. She needs me now, whatever her desires and they are forcibly keeping me from her and her from me. The hospital is using Deb because of her weakness in the face of Linda's impending death and the fact she is the number two on the health care power of attorney. The stuff about a painful death is bull. Linda and I both asked for hospice care which would provide pain relief medication during the minutes or hours it would take Linda to die off the vent. I U Hospital is terrorizing both Linda and Debbie for its own mercenary purposes. I want Linda out of there ASAP.
Please convey these thoughts to Deb if you are in touch with her. The fact she won't respond to me at all suggests she is not to be trusted, as she has completely taken the hospital's side in this.
What Deb wants, what I want and what the doctors and nurses want has no place whatsoever in the decision making process. If Linda wants to pass with peace, comfort, dignity and the solace of her husband at her side during her last hours, after all the hurt I U Hospital has inflicted on her thus far, any action they take to the contrary can only be self interested on their part. Linda is a 61 year old atheist who is entitled to have her wishes, expressed both before she ever came down here and as recently as last Tuesday, honored. What could be a more eloquent statement of what Linda wants than pulling the vent tube off her trach every ten minutes, for two hours?
For these people to say I am being irrational is absurd. Belief in God is irrational. Linda does not share that belief, and she wants a comfortable and dignified end to her life. I will fight to my own death to see she gets it, and soon. If she tells me she has changed her mind, so be it, even if that change is based on day after day of bullying by Deb and the folks at IU Hospital. Otherwise, as long as they won't let me see or speak to Linda, they have global thermonuclear war on their hands.
No comments:
Post a Comment